Conventionally, the characters or images printed on a sheet on which there is a hole generated in stapling processing or a punched hole can be color-erased by the color erasing apparatus.
However, in the color erasing apparatus which comprises a sorting function for sorting reusable sheets and non-reusable sheets according to the color erasing state of the sheet, a color erasing processing is carried out on a sheet having a staple hole or a punched hole, and then the sheet is determined to be not reusable by the sorting function. Therefore, there is a problem that it is inconvenient for a user who desires to reuse a sheet even though there is a staple hole or a punched hole on the sheet.